Entering tournaments

The whole competitive scene lives on the Discord DISSIDIA: tournaments are announced there, entries are taken there, matches are refereed there. Joining the server is free and open to everyone.

• General announcements go through the announcements channel; tournaments have their own dedicated event-announcements (announcements and entries) and event-active-thread (follow-up threads during the event) channels.
• The server's onboarding (“Channels & Roles”) lets you assign yourself a regional matchmaking role — NA, EU, AS, SA or AF — to find nearby opponents and keep latency down.
• Entering a community tournament earns the “Emu Era” role, which unlocks link and image sharing on the server.

Join the Discord DISSIDIA

The hardware requirements are the same from one tournament to the next; only the PPSSPP version changes, set by the organiser in each edition's ruleset (1.12.3 for 012 Ranked in 2024, 1.19.3 for DISSent Folk in 2025, for instance).

• A North American copy of the game (ULUS10566), legally obtained — the saves and your opponents use that version, and other regions are not compatible.
• PPSSPP in the exact version the organiser asks for: a different version can desynchronise netplay.
• Radmin VPN, connected to the Discord server's network, to create the virtual local network PPSSPP plays online inside.
• The “tournament pack” shared on the Discord bundles PPSSPP, Radmin and a 100% save file with the competitive builds — the shortest path to a working setup.

PPSSPP installation guide (PC and mobile)

Get a ready-to-play savedata

Entry is free and happens in the tournament's event channel, sometimes alongside a sign-up on the edition's start.gg or Challonge page. Two things to check in the announcement before you enter:

• The full ruleset, published on the tournament's start.gg or Challonge page: banned characters and stages, infinite limits, PPSSPP version, set format. Every edition has its quirks — see the Tournaments page for the reference rulesets and how they have evolved.
• Any admission conditions: most tournaments are open to all, but some target a specific audience — “Date With Death” (2026) was reserved for players who had never won a tournament, and some are limited to one platform (PC only).

The documented rulesets and tournaments

Tournaments are played online over several days: each round has a window in which it must be played (extendable from one to three days depending on schedules, in recent editions). A typical match runs like this:

• The stage is settled first (stage striking or a choice, depending on the ruleset), then characters are picked blind: each player sends their choice by private message to an organiser before revealing it.
• Organisers usually stream the matches on Twitch — being available to play in the stream's slot is part of the deal.
• In a dispute, replays and screenshots are the evidence; the modern ruleset provides for replaying the match identically. Some editions also formalise a “gentlemen's clause”: agreements between players (house rules for a set) must be public in the tournament thread to be valid.

The stakes stay symbolic — this is an enthusiasts' scene — but every edition rewards its entrants:

• All entrants receive the “Emu Era” Discord role (link and image sharing on the server).
• Winners may receive the “Emu Era Champion” role (DISSent Folk 2025), a Discord Nitro subscription (012 Ranked 2024) or extended permissions and a special prize (Date With Death 2026).

Any member of the server can put on an edition — every tournament documented since 2022 started that way. The full path (Tournament Organizer role, ruleset, bracket, announcement, refereeing) has its own page.

Running a tournament: the full guide